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suing an advertisement company

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can i sue yodle for changing our phone number online to a disconnected phone line? Our customers think we are out of business. they told us once we cancel with them they will change everything back to our phone number.

Well I'm in California how can I sue them if I'm here . We had over 490 hits and not 1 phone call we do ac and heating we have not got one call from the Internet. We want them to restore our number and pay for damages we lost a lot of business

Its difficult to assure you that it would be an easy claim. You would have to establish the lost business, which can be difficult. That being said, that you know how many hits you had in comparison to the amount of calls is good evidence. Along with an expert witness in marketing and accounting who has knowledge of your market, this could be turned into a damage claim.

However, getting them to restore your number is XXXXX less likely if you don't have an agreement in place with them to list your number.

That doesn't give them the right to mislist your number and divert customers, which is what they are doing. They should have simply taken your listing down, not misrepresented your number to potential customers.

Lets assume that out of every 400 people who saw the advertisement, you get 20 customers. Would the net profit you make from 20 customers justify paying a lawyer to go make the claim for you, or having to pay litigation expenses, hire an accountant to come put the damage model into place? This is the kind of money you would be able to recover.

If its, worth it, then lets talk about what you need to to do to file a suit and if you want to get a lawyer.

If not, then you should send a stern letter to them telling them to remove the false number altogether and threaten legal action if they don't. You can defintely get a court order for them to take the false number down. If that is the avenue you want to pursue, you need to file a suit against them requesting an injuction.

their headquarters is in texas, I am in california. I dont have the money to pay for a lawyer but the damages they cost us was easily 10,000 a month. We had a really hot heat wave and we made over 20000 in 2 month from home warranty calls and thats giving them a 50% discount because they give us work orders. that's about 6 calls per day for 2 weeks straight. If we got these calls from home owners using google than we would of charged them way more. Besides all those ads on google are the ones i did my self. They just went in there and added their number and website to it. I created those ads and they told me once they are canceled they will give me control of my ads. Arent there lawyers to take a case like this as contingency or maybe a class action lawsuit?

I think you most likely have a good claim as if they are intentionally listing a disconnected phone number that was never your phone number, then there is fraudulent misrepresentation going on. Again, as a lawyer, I must tell you that the damages element of your claim is hard to establish. It would be very difficult to do without a lawyer, although you could give it a try based on what you've told me. I just would hate to see you get into court and lose by not having the expertise needed to present this sort of claim.

Just for clarification, let me explain the damages element and why it's difficult to establish. The type of damages you are seeking would be called lost profits. To establish this, you would have to show with reasonable certainty that you would have received business but did not because of the actions of Yoddle. Then you would have to show with reasonable certainty what the gross profits you were expecting from the business. Then you would have to determine the net profits from that, as you are only entitled to recover net profits in this situation.

These things would be very difficult to establish in your case. Because of the nature of your business, each job could cost a different amount, and might cost you a different amount in related expenses. Further, its difficult to say with reasonable certainty how many calls you would have received from google as opposed to home warranty calls. This is not to say that it is impossible to establish, but is to say that it is very difficult, and trying the same without a lawyer would greatly decrease your likelihood of success.

Finding a lawyer to take a case like this on contingency would be very difficult as well. This is because, as explained above, the damages in your case are hard to establish. A lawyer will only take a contingency case when they know that the damages are easy to establish and there is certainty as to the recovery of them. That is because the certainty of the damages is how a lawyer determines his/her risk when taking a case on contingency. You can certainly call around your area to see if anyone is interested, but I'm just warning you to not get your expectations up.

As far as a class action, this is of course possible if there are a large amount of people to whom Yoddle is doing the same thing. However, without any evidence of this, it would be impossible to talk about the likelihood of success.

Even though they are located in Texas, you could still do the lawsuit in California. I think it might be worth it to at least hire a lawyer to contact Yoddle to try and negotiate the take down of the false numbers so that at least people don't think your business is closed down. However, I think you are looking at having to pay legal fees and also having to hire an expert witness to truly present a strong case based on these circumstances.

Please let me know if you want to discuss this more or have further questions on this issue.

I will tell you that...the things you have to go through to be an Expert are quite rigorous.

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